Phil Jones does an about face on “statistically significant” warming

Climate warming since 1995 is now statistically significant, according to Phil Jones, the UK scientist targeted in the “ClimateGate” affair.

Last year, he told BBC News that post-1995 warming was not significant – a statement still seen on blogs critical of the idea of man-made climate change.

But another year of data has pushed the trend past the threshold usually used to assess whether trends are “real”. Dr Jones says this shows the importance of using longer records for analysis. Short summary: Post 1995 warming now “significant” according to Jones Story title: Global warming since 1995 ‘now significant’

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant
global warming

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend
(0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is
quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more
likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

—
We all knew that if 2010 would be a warm year the positive trend would change from over 90% to
over 95% level significance. There is no change of mind and you know it.

Well, hopefully, people who have done their own research on the global warming issue are laughing at Phil Jones. I’ll just run down the list of reasons why Jones and his folks are so totally wrong.

First of all, the Earth has been in an ice age for the last 3 million years with ice ages occurring every 100,000 years or so. In the last 1 billion years, the Earth has been totally free of ice for at least 600 million of those years!

Also, historically, our planet is CO2 starved. Levels have been much higher in the past, all without the intervention of man. There was just a report the other day that some of our forests are starting to show signs of recovering because CO2 levels are coming up.

The Earth’s climate is probably more tied to the Sun’s activity than CO2 levels. Mars is in danger of losing one of its ice caps because of the Sun, and even Pluto has been warming up. When the Sun’s activity diminishes, such as the two years when there were no sunspots on it, temperatures plunged.

The climate goes through cycles. The Roman Empire grew when temperatures warmed up, and it could feed extensive armies throughout Europe. Rome fell when temperatures fell in 600 AD and the Empire could no longer feed itself. The cold actually triggered the Dark Ages throughout Europe. When the climate warmed up in the Middle Ages, life became easier and civilization started to make a comeback. The Vikings discovered Iceland, Greenland and Vinland (North America) when the sea ice receded during this time. Temperatures plunged again in 1450 triggering the Little Ice Age that lasted until 1890. By some accounts, the planet is still recovering from that cool down and temperatures are nowhere near where they were during the Middle Ages.

Within the greater temperature swings there are smaller cycles. The Earth’s climate was cooling down in the 1970s, triggering the famous Newsweek cover predicting an Ice Age. Most fair-minded climatologists believe the climate cooled again from 1998-2008 despite people like Phil Jones who furiously threw out the cooler temperature data (particularly from Siberia) because it didn’t fit their agenda.

The bottom line is you can’t trust anything Phil Jones says. He’s in it for the money. There have been 0 grants in the last 20 years to people who are trying to research global cooler. Phil Jones and his buddies have been living high on the hog with 6-figure grant salaries from their phony research results.

About-face: 2) A total change of attitude or viewpoint.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

It is an about-face to turn from east to west. It is not an about-face to turn from 1 degree east of north to 1 degree west of north!

Similarly, it would have been an about-face to say we went from a statically significant cooling trend for 1995 -2010 to a significantly significant warming trend from 1995-2010. But saying we went from p = 0.055 to p = 0.045 for the statistical significance of the warming trend is hardly an about-face!

(PS I made up the p values, but presumably the actual numbers are similar to what I guesstimated. I’ll do a public about-face and apology here if the numbers went from p= 0.2 or higher to 0.02 or lower.)

How is it an “about face” and an indicator he needs to “make up [his] mind” by saying what was true in 2010 and what was true in 2011?

If I say “It’s hot today” on one day and “It’s cold today” on a different day, is that an about face too?

Because climate is not some term weather event, as we’ve been told. If you have 6,000,000 data points, 1 is not going to drastically alter the average no matter how much of an outlier it is. The global climate average has not changed significantly between last year and this year. Consider the history of earth, it cannot go from insignificant warming to significant warming in 100 years, much less 1 year. Furthermore, if you look at the satellite data, the global temperatures have not gone up, but slightly down in the past year. So, how is it possible for significant warming to occur when global temperatures have cooled? It is a logical contradiction.

… and besides, we’ve had a whole year to adjust the data from 1995
onward to make sure any trend we want to see would
qualify as “significant”.

This continued flurry of warmist “Team” announcements seems to
be a concerted effort to prop up perceptions of the old Hockey Stick and
it’s “verifying” spawn… by implication vindicating Mike Mann and
increasing the lobbying to have his legal troubles in Viriginia quashed.

Any e-mails that Mike had stashed in that server at the University of
Virginia with/to/from Phil Jones that didn’t make the Climategate
release are just more chickens waiting to come home to roost starting
this August.

Jones failed to mention that his statement is only true for the “variance adjusted” version HadCRUT3v and not the original HadCRUT3.

I poked around the CRU website a bit but was not able to figure out when they updated to HadCRUT3v. Can someone more familiar with the datasets tell us when the variance adjusted version was released to the public?

JohnWho says:
June 11, 2011 at 11:39 am
=======================================
John, He’s right, and he’s lying at the same time………
The extra year of temperature data took them through 2010, right before temperatures starting falling fast…
So he can say “Last year’s analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.”

He won’t be able to say that next year…………….
……….and it implies that he’s too stupid to look at current temperature data
….or he’s lying
..

Eh.. I’m OK with it getting warmer. I like warmer weather myself. I don’t buy the “doom and gloom” stuff though associated with it. It’s not like it’s warming 1 degree per year or even every six months.. I think I can adapt at this rate.

“Phil Jones does an about face on “statistically significant” warming” Is it because basically (in my own words) he said statistics are significant in showing a warming trend but now that they do not show a warming trend the statistics are now insignificant in showing a warming trend?

Wasn’t last year an ENSO peak? There is a strong whiff cherry-picking in this result.

Even if a “convenient” result is now available, Jones should have given the it a couple of years to become more entrenched in the data. By making this announcement, he has taken the risk that crossing of a threshold is just a short-term phenomenon. Could be more backtracking in the pipeline, given time.

Will there be a big announcement if the result goes the other way next year? I kinda doubt it. All we’ll have is the worry-squad running about bleating that Jones has declared a significant positive trend.

“Consider the history of earth, it cannot go from insignificant warming to significant warming in 100 years, much less 1 year.”

Do you regard the ending of the Little Ice Age as something insignificant? Many of the recent commentators on this blog tend to discredit sceptical arguments by simply making unsubstantiated assertions or heaping abuse on climate warmists.

Jones may be wrong to claim that recent warming is statistically significant. My knowledge of statistics is not nearly good enough for me to judge. However, in principle there seems to be nothing wrong with his claim that an extra year of data could take things from just below the level of statistical significance to just over it. Therefore unless commentators have a good knowledge of statistics, or have sensible comments to make about the quality of the data, it would be sensible not to criticise him.

Even if Jones is 100% right the data would simply indicate that warming has taken place. It would not tell us what the cause or causes of that warming were.

I could be wrong here, but based on my understanding of the following graphs with their 95% levels, I completely agree with the statement: “Last year’s analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.”http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
HOWEVER, in my opinion, I believe Dr. Jones was not wise to draw attention to this fact at this time. The site above has the data to the end of April and as we know, 2011 has been one of the cooler ones of the last 15 so far. And if there is no sudden heating in the next 6 months, then at the end of 2011, Dr. Jones can probably say there has been no statistical warming for 17 years.

I only remember Paul having one revelational reversal on the road to Damascus; our boy Phil has had two.

Or, rather, I think it went this way …..

Our Phil, long on the gravy train of global warming, admits, under pressure of public scrutiny, that, in fact, there is nothing unusual about current temperatures. He is stressed to hell and suffering.

He is given a respite … a little R & R… and now he is fortified by his colleagues and paymasters, and now states:

The recent global wearming IS significant.

The money continues to flow and his retirement now has financial security. How he will live with his conscience, as clearly he is a consciencious man, I do not know.

From the BBC article:
“By widespread convention, scientists use a minimum threshold of 95% to assess whether a trend is likely to be down to an underlying cause, rather than emerging by chance.”
This is actually not true at all. In the social sciences where data is very hard to come by, perhaps this would work. They use 2 standard-deviations (95% chance it’s not just random fluctuations) as “proof”. I know that in physics people tend to ignore anything below 3 standard deviations (99.87% chance it’s not just random) and don’t call it proof below 5 (99.99997% chance it’s not just random). This is not an about-face on the data. It is an about-face on his willingness to call it significant. He could easily have used 1 standard deviation last time and called the result “significant” if he wanted, just as he now does with 2.

How fun, it turns out that the barely significant value I found turned out to be incorrect according to Dr. Jones himself. His own paper recommends using the gridded data, which does not yet reach significance – just barely.

RE HenryP and Gibraltar comment, above.
The discrepancy between Gibraltar and mainland Spanish weather stations data may, in part, reflect met station site differences. For example, whereas Gibraltar and Malaga are relatively near one another and at sea level, Granada is in the sierras and over 100 miles away. The Rock of Gibraltar is often shaded for much of a sunny day beneath the famous Levanter cloud cap which ‘sits’ over the limestone peak when winds blow from the east, i.e. out of the Mediterranean Sea. Daily max temperatures in summer at Gibraltar are usually 2-3C lower than at Malaga (airport), according to Daily Telegraph daily reports. As for Tangier, in Morocco, one might expect climatic influences often to differ from those affecting Gibraltar temperatures?

Lucia and Jeff Id have done have done statistical analyses, but for those without that kind of background, let’s put things in perspective. The Global HADCRUT linear trend from Jan 1995 to Dec 2009 was 1.16 deg C per Century. The linear trend from Jan 1995 to Dec 2010 was 0.01 deg C per CENTURY higher at 1.17 deg C per Century.

There are patterns in the variations, but the patterns will never repeat exactly . . . as we, as an earth within a solar system, within a galaxy are in constant motion . . .

We know not where we have been in the long term . . . and WE know not where we go . . . I leave that to the astronomers to discern . . . in about 10,000 years of data . . . . of which we don’t even have a history of yet . . . . Honestly we, you, they are simply educatedly’ guessing . . .

Generally, speaking, all the constant motion, is why the sun’s heat patterns have more than just the @ 11 yr variations . . . and it is understood they are not the only considerations of climate change . . . or weather in general for that matter . . . . “Many say find the cause, and there lies the cure!” In this case it is “Find the causes, in their proper magnitudes, and there lies the future!”

A little station fudge here, a little station nudge there, and .o1C/Century is suddenly significant.
Phil Jones just pulled a statistically Hansenized rabbit out of the hat.
Oh what an insignificant looking web is woven.

Bob Tisdale says:
June 11, 2011 at 1:13 pm
…let’s put things in perspective. The … linear trend from Jan 1995 to Dec 2009 was 1.16 deg C per Century. The linear trend from Jan 1995 to Dec 2010 was …1.17 deg C per Century.
=====================================================================
Thanks Bob. It doesn’t seem right to quote a long term trend from a short duration data set (15 year sample to 100 year period), especially given the large variation in temperature relative to the trend value. If you took 2001 to 2010, for example, the slope of the line would possibly turn negative. This tells me there is no real trend in the data over the time period from 1995 – pick a date. Also, from your graph, the positive slope is due mainly to the early cold period 1996-1997. Most of the rest of years add up to no trend.

I just found the maxima from Gibraltar not in line with the measured results from Granada, Malaga and Tanger. Gibraltar lies exactly somewhere in the middle of a straight line between those 3 places.
The average increase of the maxima at those 3 stations was 0.04 degrees C/ annum (since 1974) whereas at Gibraltar it was barely 0.01 degree C/annum. How can that be?

Too much co-incidence for me. It made me to decide to throw the Gibraltar results out.
Therefore, I won’t put too much trust on any results coming from the UK or the USA. I am beginning to doubt the Honulu results as well. There is just too much money riding on the “green ” horse.
Pity.
Show me some of your USA results? Anyone?

It is always very important to put things in perspective. In perspective, Jones’ announcement is no news. There is a similar headline dominating the American MSM. It reads: Arizona wildfire crosses into New Mexico. Did someone expect the fire to stop at the New Mexico border? The fact that such nonsense appears as a headline should leave all of us ROTFLOL and the headline writers hanging their heads in shame. Instead, we have to put up with this nonsense daily. It began in sports broadcasting with the non-statistic: “Ladies and Gentlemen, for the first and last time ever, tonite’s match-up on Monday Night Football is between the only two teams that are undefeated in appearances on Monday Night Football!” Undefeated on Monday Night Football? That is the basis for a statistical claim? Yet today such claims dominate news reports. I just can’t wait to learn if the Arizona fire takes another turn and invades another state. How about you?

In any case, even though the slope is essentially the same when 2010 is added, the significance increases precisely because there is more data. (In fact, if you use the monthly data for the regression fit, the upward slope is significant at the 0.001 level.)

Last year he was in genuine fear of real legal retribution. This year he figures he has got away with it and has reverted to form.
A bit like Paris Hilton really, her new-found devotion to religon only lasted as long as it took her to get out of jail.

Even though most climate realists readily admit there has been some ‘global warming’ over the past century or so, perhaps a rebound from the Little Ice Age, it would appear that every time someone here reports on the temperature history of a specific location, the result is no warming, or very little.

Does anyone else find this odd? At the very least, does it not throw doubt on the concept of a ‘global’ temperature, and on the data and calculations used to derive such a number?

“The average increase of the maxima at those 3 stations was 0.04 degrees C/ annum (since 1974) whereas at Gibraltar it was barely 0.01 degree C/annum. How can that be?”

I’m no expert, but it doesn’t seem impossible if CO2 is not the cause of measured warming. That is, local environmental factors could be blocking whatever has actually caused the warming. In the case of Gibraltar, with its cloud-cap shielding it from the sun…

This has nothing to do with the figures. This is politics. The Kyoto agreement expires next year, and it looks like the end of the scam. Jones has been roped in to do his bit. Expect colossal quantities of this sort of rubbish. After all, they aren’t getting their message across. (In my view, this phrase is just about the most arrogant piece of political drivel possible. They certainly know how to insult us!)

“By widespread convention, scientists use a minimum threshold of 95% to assess whether a trend is likely to be down to an underlying cause, rather than emerging by chance.

If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20.”

The above in the source article is wrong. Even when it does reach statistical significance, which it likely will, this will still tell us nothing about the cause. It simply tells us that it actually has probably warmed some amount and it is not simply “noise” in the data.

@ Roy
You make 2 good points.
1) with an increase in data , your stats on the data will change. It is possible that with more data, a stats threshold was reached. It is presumptuous to say it wasn’t without actually reviewing the work.
2) to everyone making a snarky anti-agw comment, it really doesn’t add to the quality of this blog. We all know you dont buy into it & thats fine, but those comments just drag this blog down to the level of AGW blogs who do little other than name call.

Charlie A says:
June 11, 2011 at 12:25 pm
I poked around the CRU website a bit but was not able to figure out when they updated to HadCRUT3v. Can someone more familiar with the datasets tell us when the variance adjusted version was released to the public?

——————————————————————————————————————-
Charlie, this page:-http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
Scroll down to “Data for Downloading” shows that the data for 2011-04 was updated on 2011-05-21. I am not sure if that is their calculation or posting date. I suspect it is not the posting date, I recall sometime back data appearing later than the “updated date”

omnologos says:
June 11, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Can you WUWT guys please stop disinforming. There is no evidence that Phil Jones has given any actual “evidence” to the Commons committee or to any of the esteemed Panels charges with exonerating him.
Do correct the caption of the picture used at the beginning of the post!
=======================================================================
om, the picture and the caption are from the Guardian………….http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/01/phil-jones-commons-emails-inquiry

Does 13 sequential years of warming out of over 140 years of records constitute “Settled Science” ?

I’m sure it could indicate a warming trend during those 13 years Cirrius provided you accept the questionable data it’s based on. But one thing it will not do is settle any science as to why any warming or cooling occurred.

Jeff L says:
June 11, 2011 at 4:20 pm
“2) to everyone making a snarky anti-agw comment, it really doesn’t add to the quality of this blog. We all know you dont buy into it & thats fine, but those comments just drag this blog down to the level of AGW blogs who do little other than name call.”
=========
Maybe, but we’re just having fun with it.
Um, why the concern about this blog, are you feeling a loss of control?

To steal an obnoxious Sports Center® phrase, “Winner, winner, chicken dinner.”
You really have to set the endpoints at the period of time that has a significance for your study goal. And then you can’t watch temperature as your important metric unless temperature is your concern. If temperature really is your concern, you need to explain the entire temperature record. Which, imho, hasn’t been done at all.

JohnWho says:
June 11, 2011 at 11:39 am
=======================================
John, He’s right, and he’s lying at the same time………
The extra year of temperature data took them through 2010, right before temperatures starting falling fast…
So he can say “Last year’s analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.”

He won’t be able to say that next year…………….
……….and it implies that he’s too stupid to look at current temperature data
….or he’s lying
=================================================================================

Well, he’s being disingenuous. I missed this because I’ve been playing in the comments section of the story…… Oddly, they’re not posting my comments anymore. Strange, I’ve never had that happen before……..lol
But for anyone confused. No skeptic that I know of has stated that it hasn’t warmed since 1995. That’s horse ….stuff. So, Dr. Phil wants to redeem himself by showing its warmed from the onset of La Nina to a huge El Nino…..big trick. Using his data……..

And, of course, when 2011 is “added” in (shaping up to be a cold-one), the period from 2005 to 2011 will fall below statistical significance. Phil Jones and the warmists, again, clutching at straws. It is all rather pathetic, actually. Let’s spend trillions changing the planet’s energy economy because some goof in a lab can just manage, with some transperant cherry-picking, to find a hint of a heartbeat in a statisitical proposition. We have all gone quite, completely mad.

I would suggest that people claiming that Phil Jones is in error or fudging his figures about this read my comment at Lucia’s:”

There is a much simpler way to show Phil Jones is telling the truth here. See the graph I alluded to earlier at: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/
Enlarge as desired. Then align a ruler from the top of the 95% error bar for 1995 to the bottom of the error bar for 2009 and 2010. You will find the ruler slopes down to the right for 2009 but up and to the right for 2010. So he is telling the truth here. However that green line at the end for the first four months of 2011 does NOT look good for Phil Jones if it continues this way for the rest of the year.

Now what did you want to do? Drop 1850-1869 — OK. Then drop 1985-1998. Dropping 1985-1998 inclusive would be 14 years. We will keep 1985 since it was a cold year and drop 1985 since it was a warm year. A regression of the rest of the years shows

Wait, maybe “stitch together” means “lower 1998 (t = +0.55) to match 1985 (-0.04) and then lower all the years from 1998 forward by the same amount. Well, I guess we could pretend 15 years of warming never existed and then pretend 1998 – 2010 was 0.59 C colder than it really was. And drop 20 years from the beginning …

Well, hopefully, people who have done their own research on the global warming issue are laughing at Phil Jones. I’ll just run down the list of reasons why Jones and his folks are so totally wrong.
Dan.
I always learn as much from the great comments as the article, I often find it helps my comprehension of the subject. and you comments add to that.
Thanks for a fact fill jaunt through history, I’m sure most readers enjoyed it as much as I did.
Dave.

“And this”
A graph of the HADCRut3 temperature graph that is misleadingly labeled.

* 1860-1880 has a regression fit of 0.104 C/decade, not 0.16. The line on the graph looks like wishful thinking .
* 1910 – 1940 is about right @ 0.15 C/decade
* 1975 – 2009 is 0.17, not 0.16.
At least if my fits are correct. So the fist slope is badly over-estimated, while the final slope is slightly underestimated.

“The Trend Repeats” — well sort of.
* The upward trends are getting longer (20 yr, 30, yr, 35 yr)
* The upward trends are getting steeper
* The downward trends in between are getting smaller.
* The current upswing has yet to show clear signs of stopping.

Our own regime is more than happy to stab their own people in the back and giggle and laugh while they do it. Handing over our Royal Navy to form an EU force without our permission, handing vast amounts of money in foreign aid while claiming there is no money left for defence, destroying whats left of our industry in the insane jihad against a harmless trace gas and plant food.
If our own government is so keen to destroy the UK as a viable sovereign nation we can hardly blame a socialist activist for sticking the boot in can we? Its not he enemies from without that are the danger, it is the enemies from within, the Quislings and traitors who are the real danger.

What do all scientists, education, UN Members, etc all have in common in discussing whether there is global warming contributing to climate change? 100% of them are effectively blind to the temperatures discussed. We uses calculators, thermometers but when it comes to building development we are effectively blind to temperature. All the laws are in place including the important meteorology contribution to building codes. Urban Heat Islands are each and every building getting radiated because of the exterior finish or lack of shade.

Oops..there go’s another point in the argument against Anthropogenic Global warming, people who don’t accept AGW remind me of the last Japanese holdouts of WW2, thirty years on those Pacific Islands must of been nice but coming back to reality must have sucked.

sharper00 says: “If I say “It’s hot today” on one day and “It’s cold today” on a different day, is that an about face too?”

Only if you are talking about the same day. Jones has done an about face in the space of one year while talking about essentially the same dataset that spans 16 years; ie., he’s suddenly changed his mind about the SAME data. So what happened to the 30-year-average rule I thought they were supposed to work, too? The alarmists dismiss any non-positive trend if it is shorter than 30 years so how the hell can Jones be so confident with half the amount?

“Phil Jones does an about face on “statistically significant” warming”

No he doesn’t. He says that the 1995-2010 global temperature trend is slightly more statistically significant than the 1995-2009 trend. Looks like you didn’t even understand that he was talking about a different time period to the last statement.

Actually I don’t care whether the warming is statistically significant or not, that still doesn’t confirm it has anything to do with man made CO2. The earth has always gone thru statistically significant warming and cooling cycles… all without any help from man.

Oops..there go’s another point in the argument against Anthropogenic Global warming, people who don’t accept AGW remind me of the last Japanese holdouts of WW2, thirty years on those Pacific Islands must of been nice but coming back to reality must have sucked.”

The question that I can’t get an answer to is “How much of the significant warming since 1995 is due to anthropogenic CO2 increase and how much is due to the rebound from the Little Ice Age, changes in cosmic rays, changes in the sun, chaotic confluence of heat release due to various ocean cycles/atmospheric interactions, aerosol distribution changes, Pinatubo bounce back, carbon black, albedo changes etc? The confidence quoted only relates to warming not being random. Well we know that it’s not random because it’s all controlled by an unsolved and as of yet unwritten, non-linear, feedback rich, partial differential equation.

As you seem to have split out the anthropogenic CO2 part I’d be interested in your methods and data and whether it indicates that we should sub-optimise world development on that basis.

And as for the Japanese on those pacific islands they didn’t know the war was over, unlike you but I bet they were amazed by the world’s societal and technological advances when they returned.

Alcheson says:
“Actually I don’t care whether the warming is statistically significant or not, that still doesn’t confirm it has anything to do with man made CO2. The earth has always gone thru statistically significant warming and cooling cycles… all without any help from man.”
My point exactly!!!http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming

As someone who served in that conflict, I appreciate your support. However I must say I found the linked website to be particularly unpleasant. Politicians do what they do. I do not expect (and I hardly ever witness) integrity from those who represent us in the global arena but I also understand they may have a necessarily different agenda to our personal issues. What I have found, in several ‘theatres’ across the globe, is a reciprocated feeling of trust, pride and professional respect between personnel of the US and UK military serving at the battlefront.

“A graph of the HADCRut3 temperature graph that is misleadingly labeled. 1860-1880 has a regression fit of…” & etc.

To quote a commentator above: “WHAT ??? .Who makes up these things?”

Answer: Phil Jones ‘made up’ that thing. The upward slopes of the various times were 0.16, 0.15, 0.16, 0.16. All pretty much identical — and completely independent of rising CO2.

The climate is doing what it has always done regardless of the amout of that harmless, beneficial airborne fertilizer in the atmosphere. Therefore, reasonable folks will concluded that CO2 has no effect. If it did, the global temperature would have a geometrically accelerating rise due to the 40% more CO2 in the atmosphere. As anyone can see from the charts I posted, that is not happening. Therefore, CO2 is not the cause of the mild warming trend since the 1600’s. “Anything else you need explained”?☺

It’s time to throw in the towel on the falsified CO2=CAGW conjecture, for all but the most cognitive dissonance-afflicted true believers. Science is based on observed facts, not on Harold Camping-style belief systems. Accept the truth, it will set you free of the debunked belief in the evil “carbon”demon. Witchcraft is so 17th century.

Thanks to Lucia for taking a look and publishing the email I sent to the Blackboard..

The problem is, the intent of this headline is to be used to prove the ‘sceptics’/’lukewarmers’ wrong somehow. It HAS BEEN sent around the world’s media, and Jeff’Id’s, Keenans, and the Blackboards fact checking will be never be communicated to the masses.

What also gets lost, is not whether the world is warming, plateauing, cooling, etc, or the rate of which over what timescale, but none of this Proves the actual cause of temperature changes

The cause AGW or natural or realisticall what % of both (and nobody knows what % of either) which is of course the whole point. The argument has descended to a media propaganda soundbite, it’s warming again, proof of AGW?!?!?
(what happened to nature, has every warming, cooing process stopped, or all cancelled each other out in a bizarre equilibrium, where only AGW makes a difference?)

The very simplistic message that the ‘sceptics’ are wrong, because the world is warming, is what this Phil Jones’ statement and BBC article was intended to convey, not least repeated by the Carbon Brief, who twittered and spun this article to the world’s media (ie their twitter followeres is a who’s who of the AGW media,NGO extablishment, including the Committee on Climate Change and UEA, Climate progress, Guardian environment, washington POst, Time, Independent, BBC, etc)

Carbon Brief:
“The claim that global warming has stopped – one of the most overused and deeply flawed climate sceptic arguments – can finally be laid to rest today, following the publication of new data analysis by one of the country’s leading climatologists”

Comments are open (may slow moderation at the weekend – ie paid staff, go home at the weekend, KEEP it POLITE, they have published ALL my comments) but no one that it will have been distributed to will ever read the comments…

Thank goodness for people like Roy and Bob Tisdale and a few others on here. Seems that 2010’s data made the temp rise significant since 1995 . . . so? It’s no surprise, given that 2010’s data was el nino spiked, and speaking 12 months from now the rise may again become insignificant. What’s wrong with him saying that if it’s reflected in the data? Forget the person, and consider the data. And remember that on its own the data says nothing about the causes of the change in temperature – nothing at all. So, what is it that’s controversial here?

If Jones’s data is wrong, the sensible response is to show that this is the case. If it’s not . . . . then, again, what is it that’s controversial here?

Seems to me that despite everything, it was actually Jones that came out in 2010 and said that the data so far indicated there had been no significant rise since 1995. That doesn’t make him a hero, but it must have been seriously disturbing for the warmistas who’re addicted to data, arguments, and inventions that bolster their case.

The drivel that litters the comments sections on this site does the sceptical position more harm than good imv . . . . many genuine sceptics who come here looking for accurate information and soundly reasoned argument are surely turned off by it. I certainly am. Some days I leave this site wondering why I bother looking through the comments . . . then I remember the value of happening across the occasional brilliant piece of analysis in the midst of acres of dross. Thank you to the sharp and balanced minds who continue to post here.

It’s time to throw in the towel on CO2=CAGW conjecture, for all but the cognitive dissonance-afflicted true believers. Science is based on facts…
.
I couldn’t agree more, Smokey. This discussion about whether or not a fifteen-year trend shows significant warming or not disguises the real question:
What caused the warming and, specifically, does it have anything to do with anthropogenic GHG emissions?
.
Since 1850 (the IPCC chose that year, not me…) there have been several short-term periods of warming and cooling. Short term trends are meaningless except for esoteric debates about what particular forcings/causes existed during those periods. The only important trend is the overall trend – the one that started in 1850.
.
Looking at that (using the HADCrut data), the steepest observed trend is between 1850 and 1878: 0.169C per decade. The next steepest trend is in 1998, an overall trend of 0.067C per decade. The trend to 2010 is 0.057C per decade.
.
Ref: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
.
The fact that the overall trend is lower today than it was in 1878 means that the much-hyped effect of CO2 and other GHGs has not, and is not, causing an accelerated change in the global temperature. Ergo, the cAGW theory is dead in the water…

“I’m rather bemused by the[BBC] article. 1995-2009, no significant warming, 1995-2010 significant warming and perhaps 1995-2011 no significant warming depending on this years temperature. Who knows! Adding a year to the trend and suddenly claiming significance as the headline asserts (‘Global warming since 1995 ‘now significant’) really shows a complete lack of understanding of linear regression, let alone the nature of the data.

The arch-alarmists who run the BBC jumped on this very quickly. It is the Jones attempt at raising his salary and getting extra grant monies from our stupid government. He will succeed and we, the taxpayer, will reap the benefits of overinflated fuel costs to pay for the useless wind turbines.

You throwing insults at people who comment in good faith on this site might also be considered inappropriate and unwarranted. You could also choose to make a worthwhile comment which explains the fundamental errors of the climate ‘science’ community rather than insulting you fellow travellers.

This discussion about whether or not a fifteen-year trend shows significant warming or not disguises the real question: What caused the warming and, specifically, does it have anything to do with anthropogenic GHG emissions?

This isn’t the most important question. The most important question is what are the consequences of rising CO2 and milder winters in the high latitudes. Regardless of the cause we know both of those things are happening. I believe the unequivocal answer is that these are both beneficial and will remain beneficial long past the point where there are no more economically recoverable fossil fuels left to burn.

It would be nice to know how much, if any, regional warming is caused by anthropogenic CO2 because, as anyone as smart as a fifth grader knows, the earth has been in an ice age for the past 3 million years and the current interglaicial period has already lasted longer than average. The global ocean is a bucket of icewater at 3C with shallow warm layer (10% of its volume) floating on top. The average temperature of the global ocean is 4C and this must also be the average temperature of the ocean’s surface over the course of one complete glacial/interglacial period. That’s [snip] cold and will be quite disastrous for humanity if it happens before the next quantum leap in technology takes place.

So what I want to know from the climate boffins is how much atmospheric CO2 is enough to prevent the
modern (Holocene) interglacial from ending.

Just a question – this business about statistically significant warming – is it warming per se, or just the anthropogenic signal that Jones is trying to refer to?
As far as I can tell it’s the global warming per se value.
If so, then obviously, the greater the time period, the greater the likelihood of statistical warming because we are still recovering from an ice age!!
Take a linear line on a graph representing with rising temps due to ive age recovery, add a little random squiggle – and obviously, in the end, due to the underlying natural trend, virtually ANY period extracted from said graph will show ‘warming’ (but obviously if the measurement period is during a downward wiggle, the time period requried to show that underlying warming will be greater).
So, exactly what is it that these muppets are trying show?

This post is silly. It shows no interest in what is happening. It is simply ignorant point scoring, and preaching to the converted. What a disgraceful site.

– – – – – – – –

John Brookes,

I agree that Jones does look silly in the BBC article posted here at WUWT. Our comments here do not contribute very much to his silliness, but we try to contribute in the given spirit of the BBC’s and Jones’s portrayal of climate science silliness.

This post is silly. It shows no interest in what is happening. It is simply ignorant point scoring, and preaching to the converted. What a disgraceful site.”

John, see my post at June 12, 2011 at 12:41 am. No one seems to answer my not unreasonable question about what is happening. If I am guilty of ignorant point scoring to which you refer then please confirm so and why. If somene is claiming an understanding of what is happening then I’d like some justifying detail to back up their view not just some first order reference to the radiative behaviour of CO2 isolated in laboratory conditions which is what is usually presented.

I’m also keen for guidance on what may be wrong or unreasonable with my question. I have met lots of people who believe in dangerous AGW but they can never answer my question. I assume that is because they don’t know enough about climate.

As for this post being silly, it is not as silly as the Jones comments it is reporting.

jcrabb says:
June 11, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Oops..there go’s another point in the argument against Anthropogenic Global warming, people who don’t accept AGW remind me of the last Japanese holdouts of WW2, thirty years on those Pacific Islands must of been nice but coming back to reality must have sucked.

And comments like this remind me of people who never learned the rudiments of fifth-grade English grammar and spelling—not to mention science.

Sorry it makes you so unhappy, John. In order to avoid more unhappiness, I suggest you MoveOn to one of the censoring alarmist blogs, where you won’t be quite so unhappy. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Arfur Bryant says:
June 12, 2011 at 2:01 am
The fact that the overall trend is lower today than it was in 1878 means that the much-hyped effect of CO2 and other GHGs has not, and is not, causing an accelerated change in the global temperature. Ergo, the cAGW theory is dead in the water…
=======================================================================================
Arfur, the trend was a whole lot faster from 1700 – 1800……….
and the trend has been dropping/slowing ever since

@ John Brookes
” What a disgraceful site”
Sir,
Any one who reads the Climategate emails and comes away saying nothing is wrong are one of the following:-
A Stupid
B Very stupid
C Clinically insane
D A pathological liar
G On the green gravy train

This site is not disgraceful, the disgrace lies with the IPCC, MSM (not all), UnRealClimate and the Fiddlestick Team. This site`constantly questioned the so called settled junk science a long time before the emails were released. It may not always be right but it is not always wrong as are the alarmists and their fellow travellers.

It says:
“The multi-model average warming for all radiative forcing agents held constant at year 2000 (reported earlier for several of the models by Meehl et al., 2005c), is about 0.6°C for the period 2090 to 2099 relative to the 1980 to 1999 reference period. This is roughly the magnitude of warming simulated in the 20th century. Applying the same uncertainty assessment as for the SRES scenarios in Fig. 10.29 (–40 to +60%), the likely uncertainty range is 0.3°C to 0.9°C. Hansen et al. (2005a) calculate the current energy imbalance of the Earth to be 0.85 W m–2, implying that the unrealised global warming is about 0.6°C without any further increase in radiative forcing. The committed warming trend values show a rate of warming averaged over the first two decades of the 21st century of about 0.1°C per decade, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans. About twice as much warming (0.2°C per decade) would be expected if emissions are within the range of the SRES scenarios.”

So, the IPCC says,
“The committed warming trend values show a rate of warming averaged over the first two decades of the 21st century of about 0.1°C per decade”.
n.b. That is “committed warming” that will occur because of effects in the past.

And the effect of increase to atmospheric CO2 since 2000 is expected to double that rate of warming to “About twice as much warming (0.2°C per decade)”.

But there has NOT been a rise in global temperature of “0.2°C per decade” or of “0.1°C per decade” for the first of half of “the first two decades of the 21st century”. Indeed, there has been no discernible rise and probably a slight fall.

So, for the IPCC prediction to be true then the global temperature must rise by a staggering 0.4°C now and stay at that level for the next 10 years. This would be more than half the total rise over the previous century, and only a member of the cult of AGW could think this is a reasonable expectation.

Indeed, if one accepts the lower limit of the “uncertainty assessment” of “-40%” then the required immediate rise rise needed to be sustained over the next 10 years is at least an incredible 0.24°C.

And to meet the IPCC prediction at a linear rate then the required rise over the next ten years is 0.8°C (or 0.48°C at very minimum)

Nobody believes such rises are remotely likely over the next decade and Phil Jones does not discuss them but, instead, he makes dubious claims about whether it is possible to detect any rise over the last 15 years.
A RISE OF 0.2°C OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS WOULD HAVE BEEN OBVIOUS FROM THE DATA.

You say “It is simply ignorant point scoring, and preaching to the converted.”

No. The above post is reportiung the dubious assertions of a AGW propogandist and his spin to deflect attention from the failure of the globe to warm as was predicted by him and others involved in IPCC WG1.

You say, “What a disgraceful site.”

I think you made a mistake here. Your post was to WUWT and nor RealClimate.org to which Phil Jones contributes.

I’d like to know what data is used which shows a 0.16 deg per decade rise between 1860 and 1880.
I agree with the trend calcualted by Tim Folkerts.

The trend from the LIA has not accelerated, therefore the added CO2 does not cause global warming.

The trend from the LIA clearly has accelerated. The CET 19th century trend (1800-1900) is as flat as a pancake. You can’t just fit a regression line to the entire dataset and then claim it as a continuous constant trend when it obviously isn’t. To illustrate the point consider these CET trends.

1800-1900 +0.03 deg per century
1900-2000 +0.65 deg per century

Temperatures in the 20th century rose at 20 times the rate of temperatures in the 19th century.

John, how did you even find this site? None of the main warmist sites have links to this place. They don’t want anyone to know it exists, let alone come here to visit and educate themselves on why skeptics do not believe that AGW is in the process of destroying all intelligent forms of life on the planet.
I find it revealing that WUWT has prominent links to all the major warmist sites for people to go visit and study up on but the warmists sites have no links to the credible skeptical sites, If you are spreading propaganda and half-truths, the last thing you want to do is send people somewhere to educate themselves.

You’re frightening yourself. The very *mild* warming cycle over the past century and a half is entirely consistent with natural variability. When you have evidence of global damage due to CO2, wake me. Until then, you’re operating under the Black Cat fallacy: you’re convinced there’s a black cat under your bed. But when you turn on the light and look… there’s no cat. And there never was.

If CO2 is harmful, then show us the global harm. Otherwise, quit trying to pass off natural climate cycles as human-caused, because you have zero evidence to support that failed conjecture.

John Finn says:
June 12, 2011 at 10:40 am
1800-1900 +0.03 deg per century
1900-2000 +0.65 deg per century

Temperatures in the 20th century rose at 20 times the rate of temperatures in the 19th century.
===========================================================
Well John, if you want to be that way about it……..;)
Temperatures increased +0.08 deg per century from 1750 – 1800

After evaluating the data from 12 weather stations, from all over the world, randomly chosen,
my finding is that the mean (average) temp. of earth has gone up by 0.02 degrees C per annum since 1974
Maximum temps have risen by 0.04 degrees C per annum and minima went up by 0.01 degrees C per annum (since 1974).
I still have to update my latest results on my pool table,http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming

the interesting fact to notice is that you can clearly see that it is the increasing maxima that have pushed up the mean (average) temperature on earth. THAT CLEARLY POINTS TO NATURAL CAUSES.
If it had been the other way around,
i.e.
minima rising at a faster rate than the mean temperature and the maxima,
we should agree that the cause was an increase in green house gases on earth.
As it stands at the moment,
MORE CARBON DIOXIDE IS OK, ok?http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok

Yes, but not too unexpected really. The period ending 2009 was on a knife edge between significant and non significant. The warmer 2010 has tipped it over to statistically sigificant. A cooler 2011 will tip it back to not statistically significant.
What’s the betting that Jones will be testifying in one years time, that the recent trend is no longer statistically signficant, if that is the case? A lie by omission is still a lie. Watch this space 2012.

_________
Don’t expect the remainder of 2011 to comply with this expectation. The 2010-2011 La Nina is over and Solar Max 24 (regardless of how weak) is ahead in the next few years. About the only thing that could keep the 2nd half of 2011 from warming up would be some nice volcanic activity, and given recent events in Chile and Iceland, that’s not too far from possible, but both of those events, even combined are still far less than the kind of cooling we saw from Pinatubo.

Again, don’t expect the second half of 2011 to tip things back to statistically no significant cooling. The longer-term trend would seem to ride against this expectation.

Arfur, the trend was a whole lot faster from 1700 – 1800………. and the trend has been dropping/slowing ever since
……………
Latitude,
.
Yes, I appreciate that. The reason I started at 1850 is that is the ‘start’ date the IPCC has chosen for an anthropogenic effect, so I didn’t want to be accused of moving the goalposts. The observed data simply does not show the CO2 effect claimed by the pro-cAGW camp. There are so many illogical holes…
.
Thanks very much for linking the data reference in a later post! :)

In 2009, the anomaly was 0.443. In 2010, it was 0.476. So if the 2011 average is 0.443 or lower, things are not significant again. For the first 4 months of 2011, the anomaly was 0.298 on the average. So it is very easy to calculate what it would have to be for the rest of the year to even make it to 0.443. The calculations are as follows: 0.298(4) + 8x = 0.443(12). Then x turns out to be 0.52. Only 1998 had a year long anomaly greater than that. So if the month of May does not reach 0.52, then each succeeding month must be higher to make up for things. Dr. Spencer’s site certainly gave no hint of a huge breakthrough in May.

We just have to be sure the following happens in February 13, 2012 as was the case in February 13, 2010:
“The BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics.”

John Finn says:
June 12, 2011 at 10:40 am
“The trend from the LIA clearly has accelerated. The CET 19th century trend (1800-1900) is as flat as a pancake. You can’t just fit a regression line to the entire dataset and then claim it as a continuous constant trend when it obviously isn’t. To illustrate the point consider these CET trends.
1800-1900 +0.03 deg per century
1900-2000 +0.65 deg per century
Temperatures in the 20th century rose at 20 times the rate of temperatures in the 19th century.”

This is an R Gates style fact. 20 times the rate in the 19th century is technically correct. 20 times a teeny tiny amount is still a teeny tiny amount.
And remember it’s always coldest just before it begins to get warmer, it’s always darkest just before it begins to get lighter and one is always dumber just before one begins to get smarter.

Warming, What Warming?
If there is one question, in my experience, that many climate scientists will avoid it is, “how long does the current standstill in global temperatures have to continue before you question some of your assumptions about global warming?”
Friday, 10 June 2011 – Dr. David Whitehousehttp://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/3192-warming-what-warming.html

If the heating from CO2 is a delayed effect, ie what we release today wont be felt until 30 years down the road, then that means the heating we saw in the 80s was from CO2 in the 50s, the heating in the 90s was the from the 60s and the heating in the first decade of 2000 was from the 70s. Didn’t we emit vastly more CO2 in the 70s than we did in the 50s? Why is the warming during the first decade of 2000s essentially non-existant while the warming rate in the 80s and 90s much higher than now? I know, you are going to tell me one volcanic eruption (Pinatubu) was so vast that it cooled off the earth for over a decade far more than the hideously potent gas CO2
could warm it. So.. why is it Pinatubo effects are essentially instantaneous while CO2 is delayed?

Note the difference between the southern hemisphere (the first 5 stations) and the northern hemisphere.
Especially in the tables for the means and minima. It appears that there has been virtually no global warming in the southern hemisphere.

Vince Causey says:
June 12, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Yes, but not too unexpected really. The period ending 2009 was on a knife edge between significant and non significant. The warmer 2010 has tipped it over to statistically sigificant. A cooler 2011 will tip it back to not statistically significant.

Not necessarily. More data means more ‘confidence’ in the result. A cooler 2011 could still give a significant trend since 1995.

If we’re all honest here we need to admit that Jones was a bit of a muppet coming out with his original “non-significant” statement in 2009. It wasn’t necessary. Between 1975 and 1995 Hadley temperatures rose at ~0.16 deg per decade. This was the status quo and it could be argued, therefore, that it was the NULL hypothesis. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for Jones to suggest that there was no statistical evidence to suggest that the 1995-2009 trend was any different to the 1975-1995 trend. If the 95% confidence interval of a ~0.12 deg trend includes the ZERO trend then it almost certainly includes a 0.16 deg trend.

In any case, the whole argument is a nonsense since it’s based solely on some arbitrary convention. If the numbers I’ve seen posted on this blog are anywhere near correct, the argument will eventually be about whether the probability of a ZERO (or negative) trend since 1995 is 5.1% or 4.9%.

John Finn says:
June 12, 2011 at 10:40 am
“The trend from the LIA clearly has accelerated. The CET 19th century trend (1800-1900) is as flat as a pancake. You can’t just fit a regression line to the entire dataset and then claim it as a continuous constant trend when it obviously isn’t. To illustrate the point consider these CET trends.
1800-1900 +0.03 deg per century
1900-2000 +0.65 deg per century
Temperatures in the 20th century rose at 20 times the rate of temperatures in the 19th century.”

This is an R Gates style fact. 20 times the rate in the 19th century is technically correct. 20 times a teeny tiny amount is still a teeny tiny amount.

Did I make any comment about the magnitude of warming? I was simply pointing out that there was a definite trend during the 20th century while the 19th century was essentially flat. This was to counter Smokey’s suggestion that there had a been a constant increase in temperatures since the end of the LIA (whenever that was).

And remember it’s always coldest just before it begins to get warmer, it’s always darkest just before it begins to get lighter and one is always dumber just before one begins to get smarter.

Comparing temperature trends from one century to the next without mentioning caveats is a good indication of very bad rudimentary knowledge of research design sampling issues. That goes for both sides of the debate. To be taken seriously, one must include these issues when quoting various data analysis, or else we spread the wrong impression regarding veracity.

R. Gates, it remains to be seen whether or not an El Nino is coming. The forecasters are divided on this issue with more predicting ENSO neutral conditions. Under those conditions, record heat is not in the near future if one were to use analog years as a comparison. We have the remains of a long lasting La Nina circling off the Pacific Coast. My bet is a wet-ish/cool-ish summer. We might have the advantage of an Indian Summer, which would allow a bit more pasture grazing prior to switching to stored hay. I hope. As for winter to the end of 2011, I haven’t a clue.

John Finn says: (June 13, 2011 at 2:56 am)
“Did I make any comment about the magnitude of warming?”
(referring to my comment: This is an R Gates style fact. 20 times the rate in the 19th century is technically correct. 20 times a teeny tiny amount is still a teeny tiny amount.)

No you didn’t, but that’s what makes if an R Gates style fact. When speaking of “20 times the rate” or “40% increase of CO2” ( a Gates favorite fact) without comment on magnitude leads to supposed implications that something dangerous is going on. Just want to be clear on that.

John Finn says: (June 13, 2011 at 2:56 am)
“Did I make any comment about the magnitude of warming?”
(referring to my comment: This is an R Gates style fact. 20 times the rate in the 19th century is technically correct. 20 times a teeny tiny amount is still a teeny tiny amount.)

No you didn’t, but that’s what makes if an R Gates style fact. When speaking of “20 times the rate” or “40% increase of CO2″ ( a Gates favorite fact) without comment on magnitude leads to supposed implications that something dangerous is going on. Just want to be clear on that.

You seem to be making the argument that as there’s only a small concentration of CO2 that it can’t make much difference. Here’s a view by Steve McIntyre (ClimateAudit)

Scroll down to the emission spectrum (observed and theoretical) graph (near end of Steve’s post). Then read this comment immediately beneath the graph.

The large notch or “funnel” in the spectrum is due to “high cold” emissions from tropopause CO2 in the main CO2 band. CO2 emissions (from the perspective of someone in space) are the coldest. ( Sometimes you hear people say that there’s just a “little bit” of CO2 and therefore it can’t make any difference: but, obviously, there’s enough CO2 for it to be very prominent in these highly relevant spectra, so this particular argument is a total non-starter as far as I’m concerned. )

I thought this argument had finally been put to rest – but clearly not.

Pat Frank hasn’t weighed in here on the issue of margin of error in CRU data sets that calculate a 0.01C degree of accuracy. But given the fact that no one seems to have noticed the wide margins he calculates make Phil Jones claim of “statistical significance” loud – but phony – clearly it is time for someone to laugh at the folly of it all

Does anyone know the statistical significance of the satellite data? I believe it is stated also to hundredths of a degree? Calling Dr. Spencer! But I also believe that the finding that microwave-measured satellite sensors can measure the warming of earth-shine – ie, reflected sunlight off the moon at night. – means at least 0.03C degree significance, the situation there is not only global, but also far, far more accurate.

On the most basic level this is utter nonsense. So last year it was not significant, but this year it is? ONE year’s data makes a difference? This from the man who claimed the virtue of long data sets? (And that’s without going into the merits of the data sets he uses.) This is low comedy at its worst.

@ Colin – you (and nearly all the other people posting here) clearly don’t understand the math or statistical concepts here. When dealing with the difference between 93 and 95% statistical significance over that data period yes, one year makes a difference. There is only a 1 in 20 chance that the increase is random.

Oh – and it is totally hypocritical to hold Jones up as evidence of something and then tear him down when you don’t like what he has to say (even you totally misunderstood what he was actually saying in the first place).

MR, no one year doesn’t make a difference. It simply ignores the question of an end point fallacy. And I am not holding up Jones as evidence of anything other than pointing out the flaws in his own logic.

Colin – you are simply wrong. Claiming “no one year doesn’t make a difference” simply shows you don’t understand the math, or care to.

Jones – “Basically what’s changed is one more year [of data]. That period 1995-2009 was just 15 years – and because of the uncertainty in estimating trends over short periods, an extra year has made that trend significant at the 95% level which is the traditional threshold that statisticians have used for many years.”

Significance levels show you how likely a result is due to chance. The most common level, used to mean something is good enough to be believed, is .95 or 95%. Inclusion of more data, 2010, moved it up from around 93% to 95%.

You guys still don’t get it.
It does not matter whether the increase in temps. is statistical significant or not.
What is important though is whether the warming is man-made or natural.
My conclusion is that it is natural warming. Namely, there is no proof of any heat entrapment caused by an increase in GHG’s. Except on Honolulu, maybe, but that result there seems a bit suspicious to me.http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming

So you can all stand on your heads now and scream at the nations to stop using fossil fuels but even if you were able to stop that now, it will not change the results.
Now I will admit that some type of systematic error may be in incorperated in my results but essentially we are still comparing apples with apples, assuming the equipment used all over the world to measure temps. is more or less the same.

What is interesting to note in my results is that there has been no global warming on the SH (the first 5 stations in the tables). It all happens in the NH. Any ideas as to why that is? Anyone?

For example HenryP says at June 14, 2011 at 10:29 pm “Namely, there is no proof of any heat entrapment caused by an increase in GHG’s.”

That is a blatantly wrong statement that ignores basic scientific knowledge that dates back over 100 years. John Tyndall back in the the late 1800s confirmed that carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas that absorbed heat rays. It has since also been confirmed by multiple other empirical methods

HenryP said “Now I will admit that some type of systematic error may be in incorperated in my results ”

That is correct – you do have systematic error. You are cherry-picking data sites, which is inherently deceptive. Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.

No cherry picking.
All stations randomly chosen! I promise. You can repeat it for yourself!!~!
(it is a lot of work, though)

You say:

“John Tyndall back in the the late 1800s confirmed that carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas that absorbed heat rays. It has since also been confirmed by multiple other empirical methods”

Just to give you an example (there are a few more issues): What everyone forgot is that carbon dioxide also takes part in the life cycle. CO2 is taken up by the plants and the trees who then take warmth from their surroundings to grow. That is what you call an endothermic reaction. I noticed this when I happened to enter a forest at dawn = you could clearly feel that the forest was cooler and that it was taking energy from its surroundings. I mean did you ever see a forrest grow where it is very cold? Up until now, nobody, including the IPCC and all those more beautiful learned people, could put a figure to the cooling caused by the CO2 in this way. In fact, they had all forgotten about it.

“What everyone forgot is that carbon dioxide also takes part in the life cycle.”

This is totally ignored by most “climate scientists”. LIfe on earth is what has created the current climate. Life is what converted the CO2 to O2 that made animal life possible. Prior to that there was quite likely a conversion of SO2 to CO2 by the ancestors of the life we find around deep ocean vents.

The temperature of the earth has been 22C for most of the past 600 million years. Virtually all life on earth evolved in a time of warmer temperature, higher CO2 and more acidic oceans. It is the ice ages of the past few million years with low CO2 levels, low temperatures and high ocean PH levels that are unusual. Our civilization is the result of a very brief warming between the ice ages. Except for this warming our civilization would not exist and you the reader would not exist.

“I was simply pointing out that there was a definite trend during the 20th century while the 19th century was essentially flat. This was to counter Smokey’s suggestion that there had a been a constant increase in temperatures since the end of the LIA (whenever that was). ”

This is due to the choice of end points. There is a 60 year oscillation in the climate signal. When this coincides with century boundaries, it skews the result. Move your endpoints 30 years earlier and repeat the calculation. What is the trend from 1770-1870? What is the trend from 1870-1970? You will find that when you do this that there was a definite trend during the 19th century while the 20th century was essentially flat.

Basically, any time your result changes due to the choice of end points, you are dealing with an artifact of your sampling technique, not a true trend. Thus, Smokey’s observation is correct. There has been a constant rate of increase since the LIA, once you make the correct statistical adjustment to allow for the choice of end points.

The underlying problem is that the 60 year climate cycle does not divide well into a 100 year century. Choose your end points on a multiple of 60 years (60, 120, 180, etc) and the trending will be accurate. (it won’t change with the choice of endpoints). If you have the correct sample size, it won’t matter if you start your sample in 1870 or 1900, it will give the same trend.

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.

ferd berple says at June 15, 2011 at 8:30 am “This is totally ignored by most “climate scientists”. LIfe on earth is what has created the current climate. Life is what converted the CO2 to O2 that made animal life possible.”

This is a strawman – Modern climate science is not debating this topic, modern climate science is reporting back on changes resulting from the physics and chemistry of how we are changing the oceans and atmosphere.

[Kindly dial back on the bold font. Italic font is just as effective, and not nearly so jarring. ~dbs, mod.]

ferd is right, of course. And the alarmist wing of ‘modern climate science’ has all the attributes of Scientology. It is an evidence-free religion that operates on faith. And there have been several good articles on WUWT over the past year debunking the ocean pH canard. An archive search will produce them.

Jones may be a Welsh name from way-back. But Phil Jones looks like an Englishman; he talks like an Englishman; and he has the arrogance of some (not all) English men. HE IS AN ENGLISHMAN! Now John Houghton is a Welshman. But please don`t tar us all.
Davd from Wales

When we use a 60 year sample, we find the same general rate of increase from 1800-1860, from 1840-1900, from 1900-1960, from 1940-2000. Thus, there was nothing remarkable about the temperature increase in the 20th century, in-spite of the massive industrialization that followed the end of WWII. The current alarm fostered by the IPCC is due to a mistake in statistical sampling. They did not test their choice of end points to make sure they were not the underlying cause of the results they were seeing.

We would see the same thing if instead of using 1 year as a sample size to judge annual temperatures, we were use 1.5 years. In our first sample we would go from December to July, and the next from July to December. This would give us the misleading notion that our first sample was showing a big increase in temperature, while our second sample was showing a big decrease in temperature.

By using a 100 year sample instead of a 60 year sample, the IPCC finds the same thing. A big increase in temperature in one century and no increase in another. However, when you change the sample size to 60 years, both centuries show the same increase in temperature, independent of CO2 production.

I would encourage anyone that is convinced of their position to repeat this simple test. Check the temperature records since the LIA using a 60 year sample size instead of a 100 year sample. Is there anything remarkable about the 20th century if you do that? If not, then how can CO2 and industrialization explain when we are seeing?

3 years ago I was a climate believer. It was only after I read the climate gate papers that I began to question the results. It was this simple observation, that there is no difference between the 19th and 20th century when you use the correct statistical treatment of the endpoints that convinced me to look further.

“Modern climate science is not debating this topic, modern climate science is reporting back on changes resulting from the physics and chemistry of how we are changing the oceans and atmosphere.”

This is not correct. The oceans are currently caustic with a PH > 8. A neutral ocean has a PH of 7. An acidic ocean has a PH less than 7.

What is happening is not “acidification” of the oceans. The correct scientific term is “neutralization”. When you add an acid to a caustic solution (base), you are not acidifying the solution. You are neutralizing the solution. You are not acidifying the oceans until they read a PH < 7, which will never happen because the salt in the ocean is a buffer that will prevent this.

This is basic inorganic chemistry and the simple fact so called "scientists" continue to use an unscientific term for what is happening is clear evidence that they are not scientists trained in chemistry.

CO2 is not acidifying the oceans. It is neutralizing the oceans. You would need to add as much acid to the oceans as there is salt before you could start to turn them acidic. All the fossil fuels on earth are a drop in the bucket in comparison to the salt in the oceans. Even if you burned all known and projected future supplies of fossil fuels on earth in a single day you would not acidify the oceans. It is physically impossible due to the salt content.

“Simple – it is impossible to explain the changes we are seeing the composition of the earths atmosphere, changes in ocean level and ocean acidification absent these forcers.”

In the contrary. Your position assumes that we know everything there is to know about the physical world. That is something happens, then the only explanation must be something that we know. We don’t stop to consider that maybe the reason we cannot explain what we are seeing is because there are things about the world that we have not yet discovered.

So, in the past when there was climate change, we sacrificed virgins and burned people at the stake, because we could think of no other explanation for what we were seeing. Now the IPCC is saying we should sacrifice industrialization to prevent climate change.

Everything in the real world has 3 truths. The things we think are true that are true, the things we think are true that are false, and the things we don’t know. Of these three truths, the smallest truth is the things we think are true that are true. Most of what we think is true in science will be shown by later generations to in fact be incorrect. Just look at what we believed to be true 100 years ago as compared to today. By far the largest truth is the things we don’t know.

Only a few million years ago the earth had higher temperatures, higher CO2 levels and more “acidic” oceans than a present. This represents the more “natural” state of the earth. We don’t “know” why current conditions are no longer like they were a few million years ago. As such, we have no way to know if what we are seeing now is part of a natural cycle, where the earth returns to its more natural state, or if something else is the cause.

What we do know is that when you look at the temperatures since the LIA, then once you correctly adjust for the end-point problem, there is nothing remarkable about this century as compared to the past. However, only this century has industrialization. As such, there is no evidence that industrialization is causing any significant temperature change, because there is no significant temperature difference between the rep and post industrial temperatures.

What we do see is a lag between temperature increase and industrialization, which suggests that if there is a cause and effect relationship, it must be temperature that is causing industrialization. Industrialization cannot be the cause as it occurred after the temperature increase started, and there has been no acceleration in temperature since the LIA, except for that created as a statistical artifact of the choice of endpoints.

DCA says June 15, 2011 at 9:54 am
“Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or “appeal to ignorance”, is a fallacy in informal logic”

You mean like when someone says “So, how is it possible for significant warming to occur when global temperatures have cooled? “
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lol, significant warming….hahahahahaha

Moderate Republican says:
June 15, 2011 at 10:17 am
DCA says June 15, 2011 at 9:54 am
“Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or “appeal to ignorance”, is a fallacy in informal logic”

You mean like when someone says “So, how is it possible for significant warming to occur when global temperatures have cooled? “

================

More like: “Simple – it is impossible to explain the changes we are seeing the composition of the earths atmosphere, changes in ocean level and ocean acidification absent these forcers.”

“So you are saying that the modern understanding of chemistry and physics is so broken as not to be usable?”

On the contrary, they are very usable when you apply the correct scientific methods with a good degree of skepticism. For example, we use the theory of gravity to predict the orbits of the planets, without the slightest idea of how gravity works. We don’t even know the speed of gravity, yet we use it to make very good predictions. The value of science is not in “truth” but in prediction. “Truth” belongs with politics and religion.

Where “science” goes wrong is when it start placing “truth” ahead of prediction. “We know the science is true, therefore the prediction must be true”. Rubbish. We know the prediction is true not because the science is true but because the prediction has proven itself reliable, time and time again. Most importantly, the prediction has never been in error. That is the true measure of science. Not the number of times a theory is correct – even a stopped clock is correct twice a day – but rather that the prediction has never failed to be correct, time and time again.

Thanks Ferd.
Those were a couple of very interesting comments. As a chemist I indeed had figured out about the same rerasoning as you did on the “acidification” of the oceans by the CO2 .
I was at Sceptical Science today, (on same Phil Jones subject) trying to share some of my knowledge over there.
I cannot believe the ignorance. People showing off as ‘statistical” experts who don’t know or understand first year statistics.Then they ridiculed my scientific method and wiped my comments when I do the same.
What a disaster.

If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20. Last year’s analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.

ferd berple says: June 15, 2011 at 10:29 am “but rather that the prediction has never failed to be correct, time and time again.’

You need to show that every climate model has been completely incorrect outside of the range of projection. Failure to do so makes you assertion an unsupported one. This sort of broad sweeping statement is rarely if ever correct and the burden of proof is on the one who makes such a broad sweeping statement.

Please also keep in mind that a single model forecast within the range it sets for as boundary conditions invalidates your complete assertion.

rather than climate change, lets talk about the a new theory. Lets call it Ferd’s Theory of Ocean Wave Change (FTOWC). My theory says that humans are causing a change in the ocean waves due to spitting in the ocean changing the surface tension. I predict that over time this will lead to more extremes of waves in the ocean.

Sure enough, if you go down to the ocean and measure the waves, you will find that the longer you measure them, the more extreme they will become. Some days they will be extremely small, others extremely large, and as time goes by the size and lengths of the extremes will increase. This then will prove FTOWC.

Anthony Watts said “Four times now you have labeled people here as “deniers” and have been snipped. Please read the site policy here…Fair warning – continued use of the word “denier” by you will earn banning.

From your policy “… personal attacks…name-calling…and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted”

Thanks Ferd.
Those were a couple of very interesting comments. As a chemist I indeed had figured out about the same reasoning as you did on the “acidification” of the oceans by the CO2 .
I was at Sceptical Science today, (on same Phil Jones subject) trying to share some of my knowledge over there.
I cannot believe the ignorance. People showing off as ‘statistical” experts who don’t know or understand first year statistics.Then they ridiculed my scientific method and wiped my comments when I do the same.
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Don’t feel alone Henry. I got half my post snipped and told to be civil when I responded to a person that thought they knew something and attempted to belittle me when I explained that having a decrease in temps means we’re not getting any warmer. Apparently, the concept is a bit too complicated for warmistas.

Quite frankly, this explains much to me. I didn’t realize the depths of the typical warmista’s ignorance until this P Jones statement. Now I realize they are so ignorant that they will willingly accept false statements because they lack the cognitive ability to verify for themselves.

Moderate Republican says:
June 15, 2011 at 10:43 am
DCA – said “lol, significant warming….hahahahahaha”
—————————-
I wasn’t the one who made that comment but I do laugh when someone thinks Jones has a good knowledge of statistics

As Prof Freeman Dyson correctly points out, climate models are not very good. Here is a record of model predictions, in which 27 out of 32 model runs turned out to be flat wrong. Much worse than flipping a coin.

I’m awful late to the party, but I couldn’t help notice a conversation still taking place here.

Has anyone shown our friend moderate how using Phils own data, that it doesn’t reach the 95% level? In other words, it doesn’t reach the level of significance. Or that using RSS’ data, going from part of 1997 to mid2009 there is a more pronounced sloop in the opposite direction? Or that going from a La Nina to El Nino to show warming is superfluous sophistry, and that if any skeptic tried to present such blathering that the warmista camp would be all over it? As a most delicious cherry pick?

Or is it that you guys are keeping him around to make sport of? It is fun to have a pet like that from time to time, but they require humoring or they’ll just leave.

From your policy “… personal attacks…name-calling…and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted”

Does not the use of “alarmist” violate that policy?
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Moderate, usually, alarmist isn’t meant nor taken as a pejorative. Like Anthony, I take exception to the use of the word “denier” because of the connotations attached to it, and, “denier” isn’t descriptive of most skeptical perspectives. Alarmist, OTOH, seems fitting to me, in that most that hold your position seem “alarmed” by current climate conditions. That said, if you have a preference of descriptive term for people that hold views close to you in the climate concern, let us know how you’d like to be identified.

I’m used to playful jabs, (“denier” isn’t what I consider playful) but, in the interest of civility, just let people know…..

If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20. Last year’s analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.

Are you arguing against math as well as physics and chemistry now?
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Sorry for the confusion Moderate, but that was me, not DCA. I understand the 95% threshold. Now, show how or where the good doctor pulled that from. Because his numbers don’t seem to be adding up. Here’s the math’s that don’t quite get there. It’s replicable. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/statistical-significance-since-1995-not-with-hadcrut/

Are you seriously saying that “alarmist” as used here isn’t pejorative by the vast majority of the posts? Really?
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Yes, I use it all the time when in normal conversations with people that hold seemingly hold similar views as yourself. (Admittedly, I haven’t read all of your comments on this thread, but in your last few, I’ve judged that your views and the many I converse with are similar.) It isn’t meant as a pejorative, but rather an appropriately descriptive term. But, again, if you’ve a term you prefer that would describe people alarmed by our climate conditions, by all means, let us know. While I can’t vouch for the others here, I’ll be happy to oblige. Though I’d be confused as to why you’d take exception to the word “alarmist”.

Thx James, for your earlier comments,
but again,
I want to stress here that it does not really matter whether the observed warming is significant on a
1%, 2.5%, 5% or even a 10-% confidence level
namely, I found that the warming of he past 3 or 4 decades is due to natural causes.http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming

So you can all stand on your heads now (or not) but changing the confidence interval or changing the start- or end dates is not going to change the fact that there is nothing anyone can do – or could have done – about the global warming,
it happened – whether we like ot or not.

BTW, I like(d) it, but that is just personal.

I do have a plan though, when global cooling sets in.
I think with our current technology we can beat global cooling, if it does not get too bad. We must just take care for earth not to become “too white”. That must sound strange coming from somebody living in South Africa (no racist pun intended)http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok

is there enough material by now to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Richard Black doesn’t understand anything about statistics, and that Phil Jones has either misused it or simply doesn’t get it either?

omnologos says at June 15, 2011 at 1:00 pm “and that Phil Jones has either misused it or simply doesn’t get it either?”

No.

BTW – arguing that Phil Jones doesn’t get it now, but did get it a year ago, when all that changed is one additional years worth of data, makes utterly no sense.

BTW BTW – arguing against 2010 in Jones conclusion that we’ve now hit the 95% statistically significant threshold is suggesting that new fact not be included in monitoring what is happening to the climate, which is also to say the whole Hill article on solar activity should be disregarded for the same reason.

Thx James, for your earlier comments,
but again,
I want to stress here that it does not really matter whether the observed warming is significant on a
1%, 2.5%, 5% or even a 10-% confidence level
namely, I found that the warming of he past 3 or 4 decades is due to natural causes.http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
==================================================================
NP Henry, and as an avid pool player, I really liked your analogy. Yes, this is much ado about nothing. Statistically significant or not, it says nothing about causation. Nearly all of us accept that the earth warmed in the 90s. So, this would be a giant yawn. The fact is, our good Dr. Phil jumped the gun a bit. But,the alarmists warmists(?) have been beaten about the head with HadCrut showing a cooling this decade, they’ll try to find anything to latch onto. (lol, I’m going to RSS next! :D)

As to your barometric pressure, look to the Ideal Gas Law. (PV = nRT, there are other variants, depending upon the field of study.) However, I caution you that the posit seems a bit controversial. Steve Goddard applies it towards the differences between Mars, Earth, and Venus. Mars and Venus have nearly the same percentage of atmospheric CO2….95% And, yet proximity to the sun can’t account for the temp differential. Further, when at the height of Venus atmosphere is equivalent to Earth’s pressure at the ground,(bars) the temps are roughly the same. Mars’ density is much less than Venus’. For Steve’s take, just go here, http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/?s=ideal+gas+law and you’ll find 3 articles about it…. there are others that preceded it.

I’d have more to say, but I’ve a horrible tooth ache and took a pain pill and now I’m a bit “fuzzy”……strange, I usually enjoy this stuff when I’m full of beer, but this is getting laborious. Please take this into account for grammar and spelling errors.

is there enough material by now to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Richard Black doesn’t understand anything about statistics, and that Phil Jones has either misused it or simply doesn’t get it either?
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lol, about the same level of Eric “I am not a statistician” Steig.

Psuedoscience is frquently used by those who do not – or wish not – to believe the actual science

HenryP says: June 15, 2011 at 12:31 pm I found that the warming of he past 3 or 4 decades is due to natural causes.”

If you go to that reference you see that that this claim is based on “Understand that it is alleged that due to increased green house gases in the atmosphere, heat is trapped that cannot escape from earth. So if an increase in green house gases is to blame for the warming, it should be minimum temperatures (that occur during the night) that must show the increase (of modern warming). ”

Huh? Please prove that this is a valid approach and has been confirmed by science through the peer review process.

Psuedoscience is frquently used by those who do not – or wish not – to believe the actual science

HenryP says: June 15, 2011 at 12:31 pm I found that the warming of he past 3 or 4 decades is due to natural causes.”

If you go to that reference you see that that this claim is based on “Understand that it is alleged that due to increased green house gases in the atmosphere, heat is trapped that cannot escape from earth. So if an increase in green house gases is to blame for the warming, it should be minimum temperatures (that occur during the night) that must show the increase (of modern warming). ”

Huh? Please prove that this is a valid approach and has been confirmed by science through the peer review process.
=====================================================
Oh, my, I nodded off just before they posted your request. Sorry for not getting back to you in a timely manner. I tried to stay up to see if you had additional offerings and/or questions.

Moderate, please try to stay informed on the “science” you advocate. My goodness, I’m hopped on painkillers and am familiar with the posit. If I could concentrate just a bit better, I’d be able to articulate it for you, but using ask.com one can easily see where this is a familiar talking point. Now, it is true, that many “studies” have used that as a given, but I know of no proof of the assertion. But, it should be pointed out that HenryP wasn’t the first to articulate this posit.

I’m a bit saddened that there are people that still cling to the notion that “peer review” is a proxy for valid science. Its really a laughable notion. Many “peer-reviewed” studies have been thoroughly debunked, and all one has to do is run through the archives here for many examples. Now, I know that will not satisfy you as an argument against “peer-review”, so I’ll apply some logic.

If you posit “peer-review” is a proxy for valid science, then you must also hold that the nearly 1000 peer reviewed skeptical papers are also valid. You must also acknowledge that scientists such as Christy, Spencer, Lindzen and several others have presented valid works of science towards being skeptical of climate change. Further, you must also hold that the likes McIntyre, O’Donnall et al, and our highly esteemed host, Anthony Watts’ offerings are also valid. This dichotomy is seemingly impossible to logically hold. Can they all be correct and all the studies they’ve countered be correct, too? Perhaps……. the Steig/O’Donnall dust up can be viewed in a somewhat humorous light towards that regard.

Oh, I forgot to show how the night warming more posit is widely accepted on both sides…… http://www.sou.edu/envirostudies/gjones_docs/Nemani%20etal_ClimateResearch.pdf …<——– As I recall, this one had a response, and http://www.pnas.org/content/101/27/9971.full.pdf . Now, I know you may be leery of quoting PNAS, in that they've been shown to unevenly apply their standards, thus calling into question their validity as a science publishing journal, but maybe you'll allow this one offering as proof the nocturnal temp rising posit is accepted. But, I do like your skepticism of challenging assumptions without empirical evidence to back it up. (Don't worry I won't call you the "D" word.)

Please list the 1000 peer reviewed papers from mainstream and reputable sources that have withstood further review by the scientific community. Christy, Spencer, Lindzen all fail that test BTW.

Alphabetical order is fine – thanks.
==========================================
lol, that’s it? No acknowledgment of the nocturnal temp rise posit? No apology to Henry for insinuating he was using psuedo-science? Then you obviously selectively misquote me? I said “nearly 1000”. No mention of the McIntyre, O’Donnall, or even our host Anthony?

And, BTW, Christy, Spencer, and Lindzen don’t fail the test if the standard is peer-reviewed. And, all of them have publishings that have satisfactorily withstood the criticisms. I would list them for you but if I’m to jump through hoops for you, you’ll have to jump through hoops for me. List and show all of the studies which Christy, Spencer, and Lindzen have been proven to be in such significant error that the conclusions are invalidated. I would caution, that once you do that you’ll be left to dispute the ones that haven’t been. (I don’t mind challenging a person’s world view, but its is an ugly thing to destroy one and I’ve no desire to do so.)

Further, your use of the words, “mainstream” and “reputable” are obviously subjective and my view of reputable and mainstream may not be the same as yours. For instance, I can show where PNAS doesn’t apply the same standards to skeptical papers as they do to warmist?(you never got back to me on how you wish me to reference this perspective) papers. To me, that would be disreputable. Many would see that as the corruption of science and an example of malfeasance and general bad character with a penchant to be unfamiliar with honesty. Yet, and correct me if I’m wrong, I somehow believe you would accept all PNAS papers that support the CAGW theory.

Moderate, I don’t mind discussing these things with you, but seeking tangential subjects to counter offerings is a bit tedious, and as I’ve stated, I’m a bit fuzzy from painkillers. So, if we’re to continue this conversation, let’s try to limit this to the points of the comments. Please and thank you.

these threads have become predictable and dominated by an all-against-one pattern, with the one being a token True Believer making all sorts of inflammatory remarks and a lot of people thinking it worthwhile to answer those remarks, as if that’d change anything. The noise becomes enormous then and the comments section a garbage dump. For this reason I won’t respond to obviously pointless replies and urge everybody to intervene only when things are serious enough to warrant intervention, exchanging views that is with people who are more open-minded than the average two-year-old.

these threads have become predictable and dominated by an all-against-one pattern, with the one being a token True Believer making all sorts of inflammatory remarks and a lot of people thinking it worthwhile to answer those remarks, as if that’d change anything. The noise becomes enormous then and the comments section a garbage dump. For this reason I won’t respond to obviously pointless replies and urge everybody to intervene only when things are serious enough to warrant intervention, exchanging views that is with people who are more open-minded than the average two-year-old.
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Omno, your point is valid, but I was bored. That said, you know that in places like this, there are many readers that don’t comment. Although, this thread is a little dated, so I’m not sure how many readers/not commentators there would be. But, if there were any left, it was for their benefit, as well as some of our skeptical friends that aren’t as well versed in dispatching warmist troll types.

Thx James, for clearing that point for me, earlier,
I honestly don’t remember how I had figured out that if man made global warming is for real it must be the minimum temps. that must push up the average temps.
I most certainly would not have known of any paper that referred to minimum temps.
As it stands at the moment (on my pool table),http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming

it appears that maxima, means and minima have risen in a ratio of about 4:2:1 over the past 4 decades. For the time being, my conclusion is therefore that the warming is natural because it is the maxima that pushed up the average temps and minima.

I think if I could get these results, anyone else should be able to get the same, as long as they play the game according to the rules: i.e.
1) randomly
2) balanced, ::::NH versus SH
Namely the funny thing is that I observed now is that the warming is not at all the same in the SH (where I started playing) and the NH. Why that is I don’t know> perhaps it could be because there is much less landmass in the SH? But why would that make a difference?
Anyway, whatever the reasons, I now have to carefully look at my table again, to balance it,
i.e the same amount of stations NH and SH + approx. same NH latitudes and SH latitudes.
Not an easy task for one and only person….with only a limited amount of hobby time
and that is: yours truthfully
Henry

Thx James, for clearing that point for me, earlier,
I honestly don’t remember how I had figured out that if man made global warming is for real it must be the minimum temps. that must push up the average temps
I most certainly would not have known of any paper that referred to minimum temps………..
=========================================================
Henry, just chalk that up to “great minds think alike” or something of that nature. More than once I’ve had a thought that excited me to no end, only to find that someone had already addressed or shown the very same thought…..sigh

James,
the only thing what I can do for you is share the excel files of the SH weather station information collected
(only the first 4 stations) which does report in one of the columns incidence of snowfall/ ice pellets
but I am afraid those are places where there never is any -or very little- snowfall. Except maybe the station in LaPaz because it is higher.
To put more balance on my current table, I do plan to visit a station in the antarctic region soon, if I can find one with reliable data going back 30-40 years in time.

Scroll down to the emission spectrum (observed and theoretical) graph (near end of Steve’s post). Then read this comment immediately beneath the graph.

The large notch or “funnel” in the spectrum is due to “high cold” emissions from tropopause CO2 in the main CO2 band. CO2 emissions (from the perspective of someone in space) are the coldest. ( Sometimes you hear people say that there’s just a “little bit” of CO2 and therefore it can’t make any difference: but, obviously, there’s enough CO2 for it to be very prominent in these highly relevant spectra, so this particular argument is a total non-starter as far as I’m concerned. )

I thought this argument had finally been put to rest – but clearly not.
__________________________________________________
Indeed, there should be no argument on the importance of CO2, because the
absorption is so large in the main band as to make the troposphere essentially opaque, as evidenced theoretically and experimentally in the figures reproduced in Steve Mc Intyre’s post.

Note however that his analysis points to any change in tropopause or stratosphere .
temperatures as consequently capable of modifying the earth radiation in this band.
This is a big starting point for a multiplicity of subtle, and hitherto largely undiscussed, climate effects resulting from CO2 optical absorption, but not from CO2 concentration changes : you might consider for instance climate effects of ozone variation modifying stratospheric temperatures, hence the radiation emitted in the main CO2 band.

CO2 concentration is not the whole story, even when considering CO2 absorption.

My new tables show that maxima, means (=average temps) and minima on earth have risen at a ratio of 6:2:1
Remember: these are actual measured results from the past 4 decades from a number of weather stations all around the world.. No hypothesis.

if it had been the other way around, i.e. rising minima (that happen during the night) that pushed up average temps. I would agree with you that it was an increase in GHG’s that caused the warming.

As it stands, surely, you must see that it was maximum temps (that occurred during the day) that pushed up the means and the minima?
that means that you have to be an idiot not to comprehend that the observed wearming was natural?

henry P says
if it had been the other way around, i.e. rising minima (that happen during the night) that pushed up average temps. I would agree with you that it was an increase in GHG’s that caused the warming.

As it stands, surely, you must see that it was maximum temps (that occurred during the day) that pushed up the means and the minima?
that means that you have to be an idiot not to comprehend that the observed wearming was natural?
__________________________________________________________
Sorry, Henry you did not understand my argument, (or it was not well stated). I was just pointing to additional possible mechanisms that do not rely on an increase of GHGs, thus giving more weight to the possibility that observed changes are natural.